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Sunday, June 5, 2016

Northern Defenders Open VIII Tournament Report

This tournament took place about a month ago, but things have been so crazy I haven't had a chance to get around to writing up a report!

Norther Defenders Open VIII is the 8th in a series of events run by the Quebec Club "Northern Defenders". These guys have been heavy into Fantasy, and now 40k, for many years and always put on great events! Previously this event was hosted in Quebec City, but this year was moved to Montreal which seems to be a much easier location to draw a crowd for. The 40k GT this year was 28 players, 6 rounds, 1850 pts, and ITC comp.

I took my Tau to this event, and ran the usual double Stormsurge/Riptide Wing shenanigans:

The event seemed quite heavily stacked with Eldar, which is an army that I have a hard time against with this list, but both fortunately and unfortunately my main competition at the event looked to be my clubmates (CanHammer), so even if I lost it meant that the club overall would probably do better...

Round 1 - Tau vs Necrons

My first game was against a Montreal local named Kevin and his freshly build Necrons. He was running a Decurion with double Canoptek Harvest and a Judicator Batallion. The first mission was similar to ITC style maelstrom, but each objective could only be accomplished once (according to the TO, I know not everyone played it this way however), combined with objective control at the end of the game (e.g. Crusade).

Unfortunately, I don't think Kevin had too much experience against this sort of Tau list... I had first turn and before he had a chance to move any models he had lost all but 1 of his Wraiths, and one of his Spyders was 1W away from death. The game progressed in a similar fashion, with most of his models unfortunately dying before being able to inflict any real damage. Stomp played a huge role in this game as the Stormsurges tap danced all over anything that came within about 16" of them and managed to hold down a full half of the board on their own.

Kevin did his best to grab objectives as they presented themselves, but unfortunately that usually meant trading 1-2 units to get the point, while being unable to deny me scoring my own objectives. The game ended on turn 3 when Kevin had no remaining models, with a final score of 30-0 for me.

One big highlight of this game was a unit of Tomb Blades keeping one of my riptides tied up in combat for 5 player turns! Kevin was a great sport, and the game was an absolute pleasure.

Round 2 - Tau vs Chaos Space Marines

This game was a little odd - we had someone who did not show up for the tournament so I ended up playing against the ringer. Unfortunately, the ringer had also been unable to come, so I think I played against the second ringer, a gentleman named Jeremy.

This game went the way it looks on paper... Jeremy did lots of wounds to my Stormsurges, but unfortunately did not manage to kill any models throughout the game, and this one came to an end on turn 3 with a score of 30-0 in my favour.

Round 3 - Tau vs Eldar

Hot off two wins, albeit one against the ringer, I was pitted against my club mate Diogo (currently 4th ranked Eldar in ITC). This mission was all about objective control - 1 point per objective controlled at the end of your turn, 3 points for controlling the objective corresponding with the game turn (e.g. 3 points for holding objective 4 on turn 4), and 5 pts for each objective controlled in either player's deployment zone at the end of the game.

Diogo runs a really nasty list (double CAD Eldar) that routinely gives me a lot of trouble as it has all of the tools to deal with my army:

I've generally found that the void shield totally shuts me out of the game for a turn with this list, so that's something that I need to figure out a way around, as I know that this is a match that I should not immediately lose... Unfortunately, that's not quite how things turned out.

Diogo rolled his warlord trait for +1 to seize, and got another +1 due to my Gargantuan Creatures, and ended up succeeding his 4+ seize. Turn 1 saw both Stormsurges dead, and a Riptide at 1 wound. There isn't much to say past this... I managed to hold out until turn 5 and pulled in points where I could, but Diogo ended up tabling me and claiming a 30-0 victory over me.

Game 4 - Tau vs Eldar/Dark Eldar

This round pitted me against another Eldar player in a mission similar to The Scouring, combined with "Mark for Death" where a specific unit chosen in the enemy's army was worth 5 victory points if killed before the end of the game.

Erik's list was an Eldar CAD, an Aspect Host, and an Allied Detachment of Dark Eldar:

Coming off of a loss against Eldar, and facing a very real prospect of losing all of my markerlights in a single turn to the Samsquanch Wraithknight, I was a little bit nervous. Erik won the roll to deploy first/choose to go first (as per the rulebook version, not ITC), null deployed, and gave me first turn. He had deployed a unit of Warp Spiders and a unit of Kabalite Warriors - I was able to get him down to just 2 models left on the table thanks to a VERY poor flickerjump roll, but that was enough to keep him in the game!

Turn 2 saw his entire army minus a venom come into the game, with the Hornets outflanking, the Skathach walking on, and everything else deep striking. The Wraithguard met the expected fate of a S10 blast removing them before they could even see the shooting phase, 2 of the Hornets were destroyed, and the Venom with the Medusae exploded and took a Medusae with it.

Things were not looking terrible for Erik, but unfortunately he made a few key misplays. Instead of charging through my Riptides with the Wraithknight, he got a little bit greedy and wanted to take out my Marker Drones, which resulted in him killing 4 of them, but getting riddled with shots and being counter charged by the Stormsurges who managed to burn through the remaining 2 wounds in 4 rounds of combat while only suffering 3-4 in return. This misplay, combined with bringing his deep striking Venom right next to the unit of Warp Spiders with his Autarch in it sealed the game. I was able to target the Venom for Interceptor, and the large blasts of course also hit the Spiders who were unable to jump as they were not targeted - this was Warlord and 3 dead units in a single Movement phase.

At the end of the game I got my Mark for Death from the Wraithknight, and controlled 4 of the 6 objectives, giving me a 30-0 victory.

Game 5 - Tau vs Eldar

More Eldar! This game was against Danny, whom I believe is from Quebec City. In an awkward situation for both of us, Danny spoke even less English than I do French (for anyone who doesn't know, Quebec is a French speaking region of Canada, so not unlikely to hit this scenario at least once). This resulted in some major communication issues, but we were able to get through our game amicably through a series of grunts and hand motions.

This mission had 3 main objectives - control the center of the table at the end of the game for 10pts, two objectives worth 5 points each, and kill points.

As noted, a few things got lost in translation and I had set up thinking that the Vaul's Wrath batteries were the D batteries that everyone normally uses, only to find that they are in fact 48" range Barrage... good-bye Marker Drones! This game went incredibly badly for me right from the start when I was unable to kill a unit of Dark Reapers with 3 Riptides, or a unit of Jetbikes with the Stormsurges. I was able to force lots of Jinks, and got lots of units to take leadership tests, but just couldn't seem to kill them even with the dice odds heavily in my favour.

Added to this was the double Farseer setup sitting out of LOS (and SMS range) keeping his Wraithknight invisible, with Ignores Cover, and casting Prescience on the Vaul's Wraith Support Batteries. I just couldn't keep up with the firepower, or unmitigated D firepower from the Wraithknight, and eventually ended up being tabled on turn 7 after making a mad dash for the center of the table to get King of the Hill at the end of turn 6.

The final score was 30-0 in Danny's favour.

Game 6 - Tau vs Necrons

The final round of the tournament set me against a very skilled and friendly player named Denis, and his double Canoptek Harvest/ Destroyer Cult Decurion. This mission had Dawn of War deployment and 2 rows of objectives at the 15" line, with 3 objectives spread evenly in front of the deployment zone of each player. The objectives were - 1 point per objective controlled in your table half, 2 points per objective controlled in your opponent's table half, and 4 points per objective controlled at the end of the game.

I'll have to go with Denis' list from memory here, but hopefully I have it right:

The image above is from turn 2, and demonstrates a big misplay by Denis that in all likelihood cost him the game here. Denis had first turn, but I think may have been a little bit too aggressive. He moved his Wraiths straight toward my Stormsurges, and the other unit straight toward the Riptides, and then ran them even closer to the Stormsurges. He also brought his Scarabs up along side the Wraiths toward the center of the table. With 7 markerlights, 2 Stormsurges of shooting (minus the burst cannons, which went into the other Wraiths and Scarabs), and 3 Hailfiring/Ripple Firing Riptides, the unit of Wraiths next to the Riptides evaporated, and left the other unit (and the Scarab unit!) in a perfect position for a multi-charge.

The Stormsurges did their tap-dancing while the Riptides managed to burn through a unit of Destroyers each turn as Denis didn't have an answer to the 2+ armour saves on the Riptides or the Commander. I crept my way across the board trying to corrall Denis into a corner, however the Stormsurges were not rolling the 6s I needed (lack of skill, am I right!?) so he was able to deny me 2 of the objectives in my table half while he racked in points on them.

The game ended up being extremely close, and was won by a single failed save by Denis which allowed me to gain control of one more objective at the end of the game, and deny him Linebreaker. This was one of the most back and forth matches I've ever had at a tournament, and was extremely fun! The final score for this game was 25-5 in my favour.

Final Results

The final results for the event can be found here. I ended up taking 5th place overall, 7th place in Battle Points, and 7th place on Presentation with a 4-2 record. Top 8 had 4 Eldar, 2 Tau, Space Marines, and Blood Angels (!?!?!?!)! I am, however, happy to say that Team CanHammer took home several prizes from the event including:

Best General3rd Best General2nd Best Overall3rd Best Overall3rd Best Painted

I do believe that this was the final year of the ND Open as the head TO will be moving, but that may give a good opportunity for us, or another group in the eastern Ontario/western Quebec region, to run a 2-day GT in the spring!

Huge thanks to Dom and the ND crew for putting on an extremely fun event! See you all at Adepticon next year hopefully!

Full album of pictures from the event can be found @ https://www.facebook.com/1PlusArmour/photos/?tab=album&album_id=550723778421536.